Woman’s murder case reopened after years of questions

Day one of a two-day series. Read the second part.

EDCOUCH — Ann Marie Garcia was certainly no saint. But she never deserved to die the way she did.

Strangled, abused and dumped on the banks of a Delta-area canal, her body was found on Oct. 23, 2003, by fishermen searching a field of tall weeds for bait.

Investigators combed the scene for hours that fall morning but uncovered few clues as to who killed her or why.

For years her murder went unsolved. And it likely would have remained that way were it not for the efforts of one detective determined to follow the truth.

Tracking Ann Marie’s killers led Sgt. Rafael Garza through a dark world of spurned lovers, drug smuggling and international organized crime — grown no less grim by the passing of several years.

But still, the Hidalgo County sheriff’s deputy persisted, determined not to let her memory — like those of so many other victims of unsolved murders — fade away in a haze of mystery.

“These aren’t just names in a report — they’re people,” Garza said. “And as an investigator, you’re their last voice.”

COLD CASES

The conviction of two men in 2006 for their involvement in Ann Marie’s murder cleared her case from the sheriff’s office unsolved files.

But dozens of thick case files on the county’s unsolved deaths remain. There are enough to fill a room from wall to wall, Garza said.

Each folder is stuffed with false starts. Each victim’s life and grisly murder has been reduced to a sheaf of bound paperwork.

Last year, only two detectives were permanently assigned to investigate these cases, Sheriff Lupe Treviño said.

“To be very honest, our emphasis is on current murder cases,” he said. “We do work (cold cases), but we do them slowly.”

Unlike larger cities like Dallas, Houston and San Antonio — each of which have squads of investigators devoted solely to cold cases, the smaller law enforcement agencies of the Rio Grande Valley take up old investigations only when they can.

With limited time and resources, local authorities can rarely dedicate the manpower to sprawling, time-intensive investigations that have already ended in dead ends one time around.

Still, in 2005 the sheriff dedicated Sgt. Garza and another deputy to clearing out the backlog.

“I was afforded time that the original investigators never were,” Garza said. “These murders were one of many things on their plates at the time.”

Aided by the development of new forensic technologies and advanced criminal databases, the investigators approached these old cases in new ways.

But the answers modern tools delivered were often limited by the evidence originally collected at the crime scene, Garza said.

The first 48 hours of any homicide investigation often yield the most crucial clues. After that, leads dry up, suspects cover their tracks and witnesses remember less clearly.

In Ann Marie’s case, those critical first hours delivered some promising momentum and then a shuddering halt.

“Time is your enemy in a homicide investigation,” Garza said. “The suspect has a lead on you. In some of these cold cases, that lead is measured in years.”

THE FIRST 48

Authorities uncovered several potential clues in the hours after finding Ann Marie’s body along the canal banks two miles south of Edcouch.

Dressed in denim capri pants and a pink shirt, the 21-year-old’s long, straight, black hair lay tangled in the weeds around her.

Early on, investigators suspected a shoelace discarded feet from her body was the weapon her killer had used to garrote her.

Preliminary autopsy results uncovered traces of heroin and crack cocaine in her system — a revelation that came as no surprise to her friends and family.

Ann Marie, they said, was a girl born into unfortunate circumstances. Raised by parents with ties to the Mexican Mafia, she spent the last years of her life cycling through a string of drug-dealing, gang-affiliated boyfriends.

They told investigators she spent the night of her death with the latest — Reynaldo Saenz, a then 43-year-old drug dealer with ambitions of moving up in criminal circles.

When investigators arrived at Saenz’s La Casita home two days later, they hoped they might catch the break that would solve Ann Marie’s murder. Instead, they found a man who could have stopped it.

Saenz told deputies he had been smoking crack with Ann Marie two nights earlier when a group of masked men burst through his door. They knocked him out, tied him up with duct tape and threatened him with high-powered weapons.

The men pulled Ann Marie into the laundry room, Saenz told investigators, while several others loaded his substantial drug stash into their van.

But before they took off, they took Ann Marie with them.

At the time, Saenz figured his girlfriend was in on the plot to steal the drugs. He didn’t report her kidnapping or the home invasion to police.

And because the gunmen wore masks, he said he couldn’t identify any of her captors.

With no idea who abducted Ann Marie, where they took her or why, investigators from Starr and Hidalgo counties had reached a dead end.

They actively investigated the case for a few weeks more. But with each passing hour, her killer slipped farther and farther away.

Eventually, her file found a spot on a shelf back in the sheriff’s office — tucked away among the dozens of others. Months after her death, Ann Marie’s case was nearly forgotten.

NEW SUSPECTS

The case ended up on Sgt. Garza’s desk two years later when an inmate at the Starr County jail claimed he had participated in the Oct. 22, 2003, drug raid at Reynaldo Saenz’s home.

Garza, a newly named cold case detective, was eager to push the investigation forward. And with the prospect of fresh testimony, Ann Marie’s file floated to the top of his workload.

But deciding to reopen an unsolved murder like Ann Marie’s involves a complex rubric of criteria. Detectives must consider whether witnesses and suspects are still available for interviews and whether prosecutors feel they can successfully try the case.

Before expending long hours and department resources on a pursuit that could end as nothing more than a wild goose chase, investigators must determine the likelihood that the case will be closed, said Rudy Jaramillo, a former cold case detective with the Texas Rangers who spent years investigating the 1960 murder of McAllen beauty queen Irene Garza. That case remains open to this day.

“If there are no witnesses, no suspects and no crime scene left, these cases will still be almost impossible to wrap up,” he said.

So when Sgt. Garza arrived in Rio Grande City to meet with the self-professed suspect, he hoped Luis Carlos Mares could offer the answers he needed to justify reopening the case.

The 33-year-old Mexican Mafia sergeant delivered. But what he had to say posed many more questions.

THE RAID

Mares told Garza that Reynaldo Saenz was half right when he shared his story of the drug raid at the La Casita home.

The gunmen had come to steal the marijuana, but Ann Marie had no part in the planning, he said. She just happened to be in the wrong place with the wrong man.

Mares and several of his gang cohorts had planned the attack after learning about a 2-ton load of marijuana Saenz was holding for a Mexican drug smuggler known only as “El Piojo,” the Louse.

The house should have been an easy target, they thought. Saenz was a drunk and would likely be alone on a Wednesday night, Mares told Garza.

But on Oct. 22, 2003, he wasn’t. He was with Ann Marie.

The sight of another person ruffled the men as they stormed the house just after 11 p.m. But Mares, who had forgotten to wear a ski mask that night, found a bigger surprise waiting inside.

He immediately recognized the dark-skinned 21-year-old woman reclined on Saenz’s couch, her thin frame relaxed by the effects of crack cocaine.

But more importantly, she recognized him. It was an identification that would eventually get her killed.

Ann Marie Garcia was Mares’ ex-girlfriend.

COMING TOMORROW: Building a case against Ann Marie’s killers

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Jeremy Roebuck covers courts and general assignments for The Monitor. You can reach him at (956) 683-4437.

Ann Marie Garcia’s October 2003 death is one of dozens of murder cases in Hidalgo County that remain unsolved. Here are a few of the most notorious:

GUILLERMO GONZALEZ CALDERONI

The assassination of former Mexican drug czar Guillermo Gonzalez Calderoni is perhaps the most brazen of the area’s unsolved killings. It also remains one of the most mysterious.

The 54-year-old McAllen resident was killed Feb. 5, 2003, by a single bullet while parked outside of his lawyer’s 10th Street office.

But Calderoni spent his career building a lineup of potential suspects in his own eventual murder.

As the head of anti-cartel efforts in Mexico in the 1980s, he helped bring down some of that country’s biggest drug smugglers. But he was later accused of working with some cartels while protecting others.

He fled the country in infamy in the late ‘90s and resisted several attempts by Mexican officials to extradite him for prosecution.

Soon after his death, McAllen police recovered surveillance video of his assassin from a nearby convenience store and then found the killer’s car in a nearby church parking lot.

But almost five years later, no one has been arrested and no suspects have been publicly named.

Authorities urge anyone with information on this case to contact McAllen Crime Stoppers at (956) 687-8477.

JASON BUCKELEW AND ENEDELIA BENAVIDES

Jason Buckelew and Enedelia Benavides never heard their killer coming.

The deaf couple from Houston was shot to death Aug. 25, 2002, while staying in a relative’s Edinburg trailer home. To date, the city’s police have no idea who might have killed them.

Although detectives once described the slaying as an “assassination” — not a random act of violence — rumors that Buckelew and Benavides’ relationship was on the rocks have led to few investigative leads.

A housekeeper and a babysitter in the house at the time of the killings have been unable to guide authorities, Edinburg police Chief Quirino Muñoz said in 2004. The killer shot one of them, permanently damaging her mental functioning. The other — an illegal immigrant — never actually saw the suspect and has since been deported.

Authorities urge anyone with information on this case to contact Edinburg Crime Stoppers at (956) 383-8477.

VICTOR YANEZ

Seven years after Victor Yanez was gunned down in Donna while driving home from a bar, police still have few clues.

On Aug. 18, 1997, someone shot the 44-year-old’s truck 14 times, striking him once in the abdomen. Yanez managed to make it to Knapp Medical Center before collapsing and dying.

Police pursued tips that a jealous ex-girlfriend or alleged drug connections may have been behind the attack, but each went nowhere.

Since his death, family members have offered a reward for information and even set out to investigate the murder themselves.

Authorities urge anyone with information on this case to contact the Donna Crime Stoppers at (956) 464-8477.

IRENE GARZA

Even though investigators insist it has been solved, no one has ever been prosecuted for the 1960 death of McAllen teacher and beauty queen Irene Garza.

Garza’s body was found floating in an irrigation canal on April 21, 1960, and almost immediately police suspected priest John B. Feit in her murder.

Feit had met with Garza at a local church the night of her death and later allegedly confessed to fellow priests that he had killed her.

However, interference from the Catholic Church and the strong religious feelings of preliminary investigators hindered the case early on.

After the case was reopened in 2002, a grand jury failed to indict Feit, who is no longer a priest.

He continues to play an active role as a layman in his Phoenix church and maintains his innocence to this day.

Source: Monitor archives